In the state of the art of electric devices and especially of electric hand-held devices the continuing wish emerges to improve energy efficiency. Especially in the case of portable hand-held devices, such as remote controls, input devices for game consoles or mobile phones, using exchangeable batteries or accumulators for power supply, such a wish is amplified, since batteries or accumulators must be frequently changed. An improved energy efficiency lowers on the one hand the power consumption, which leads to a higher battery or accumulator lifetime and produces on the other hand an advantageous ecologic effect, since fewer batteries or accumulators need to be disposed.
In the state of the art it is known that hand-held devices should be switched to a so-called sleeping mode when not in use. In the sleeping mode all the functions of the hand-held device, which are only necessary when using the device, are deactivated. In this way the power input of the device can be significantly reduced. When in use the hand-held device is switched to a so-called active mode, in which the full functional capacity of the device is made available.
In order to switch a hand-held device to the sleeping mode on one hand and from the sleeping mode to the active mode on the other hand, it is known that switches are provided with which the respective mode can be manually activated. This has the disadvantage that hand-held devices, also when not in use, such as for example in case of a computer mouse, often remain in the active mode, since a manual activation or deactivation of the active mode seems relatively complicated or easy to forget. Therefore, the desired energy efficiency improvement is not achieved to a great extent.
Usually computer mice allow the generation of X/Y control data by means of the corresponding movement of the computer mouse on or against a surface. These computer mice are further equipped with a key device through which selection operations can be performed. Moreover, computer mice are also often equipped with a scroll wheel through which input signals can also be generated. The keys and/or the scroll wheel of the computer mouse are also frequently developed as to bring the computer mouse into the sleeping mode or into the active mode. This requires, however, a manual action of the user.
Computer mice are increasingly formulated as cordless devices. The power supply of the computer mouse typically occurs by means of batteries or accumulators. In case of such mice, differently from conventional wired mice, an issue is that batteries need to be frequently replaced or that accumulators need to be frequently charged.
In order to avoid a manual activation or deactivation of the hand-held device active mode, the GB 2 398 138 A suggests providing the hand-held device with a wake detector, which includes a capacity sensor. When a hand-held device gets close or in contact with a hand, the hand-held device switches to the active mode automatically. When a hand is removed the hand-held device switches automatically to the sleeping mode. To detect the approaching of the hand, the capacity of the capacity sensor, which changes with the approach, is measured, in which a predetermined capacity constitutes the switching threshold for the wake detector.
Experiments have shown that such a wake detector has the disadvantage that the approaching of a hand to the wake detector is not reliably detected or, in the worst of cases, is even wrongly detected. This is especially the case, when a hand-held device is placed on an electrically conductive material, such as a table with a metal plate. Thus, the wake detector cannot reliably distinguish the electrically conductive surface from a hand. Therefore, there is the danger that the wake detector detects a hand by mistake, and the wake detector consequently switches the hand-held device to the active mode. This again remarks the fact that only a part of the desired energy efficiency improvement is achieved.
Another disadvantage of the solutions known from the state of the art, is that the approaching to different areas of a hand-held device or an approach from different directions is not detectable. Equally, with the known solutions it cannot be determined which areas of the hand-held device are to be touched.
The task of the present invention is that of creating solutions for an electrical hand-held device, by means of which the approaching of a hand to the hand-held device can be reliably detected and areas of a hand-held device can be identified where an approach and/or a contact occurs or the direction from which the approaching comes.